"There is no gold in the gray mountains" by Andrzej Sapkowski, summary

The book serves as a frank writer’s manifesto. Dissecting the mistakes of others, the creator of the Witcher series constructs a lineage of modern European fiction through the prism of medieval literature, vitriolic literary criticism, and zoological Latin. A practitioner of the craft attacks forgeries. Myths are dissected here without the slightest respect for the authority of old university departments. Forgeries are slaughtered. This collection of essays and reference notes was compiled between 1992 and 2001, and was published as a separate volume in 2002.

The Celtic Root and the Deception of Chivalry

The first major section examines the British myth from its origins to the later literary versions of the fifteenth century. The legions abandoned the island. Vortigern called in Saxon mercenaries led by Hengist and Horsa, sealing the political pact with a marriage and ceding the lands of Thanet to the strangers. During a feast at Stonehenge, guests drew knives. Amid the ruins of the former order, Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon organized a defense, later completed by the young Arthur, who routed the Saxon foot soldiers in twelve battles thanks to his heavily armored Roman-style cavalry. The fifteen-year-old chieftain drew his blade. The victory at Mount Badon around 516 gave Britain half a century of respite, confirmed by modern archaeological excavations. Church authors like the monk Gildas omitted the name of the victor.

Geoffrey of Monmouth transformed a half-forgotten warlord into a crowned conqueror of Rome, foisting a romantic plot upon the European courts. The trouvéres added a courtly flair. The Frenchman Chrétien de Troyes brought Lancelot to the forefront, sending him to rescue Guinevere on a shameful peasant cart for the sake of a lady’s whim. The Cistercians rewrote the legend from the ground up. The monks created a pious Galahad, supplanted carnal passion with preaching abstinence, and transformed the pagan Grail — the Celtic cauldron of abundance of the god Dagda — into a liturgical vessel containing the blood of the Savior.

In Germany, Wolfram von Eschenbach argued with the monks. The chivalric romance "Parzival" declared the Grail a miraculous stone, granting eternal youth and demanding simple human compassion for the pain of others. The ideal remained elusive. Real-life knights slaughtered the peaceful population of Béziers, drove red-hot iron rods into the backsides of deposed kings, and plundered churches, while Thomas Malory, in his prison cell, pined for the fictitious golden age of Camelot.

The Celtic chieftain’s power rested on tribal consensus and a ritual union with Mother Earth. The ailing land demanded a strong man. The Round Table of Vas and Layamon resolved disputes over leadership by seating the hundred and fifty warriors as equals. Bloody feuds raged over the table. Gawain stabbed Pellinore to death in vengeance for his father, and later, together with his brothers, he vilely murdered the unarmed Lamorak in the bedchamber of his mother, Morgause. King Mark stabbed Tristan in the back with a halberd. The mad Mordred took advantage of the revelation of the queen’s treason to rebel and clash with his own father in a fratricidal massacre at Camlann. The son impaled himself on an enemy spear.

The mortally wounded bastard pierced his father’s helmet with a return blow of his sword and forever buried Logr’s hopes for a golden age of prosperity.

Bedivere stood alone among the fallen warriors. With a heavy sigh, the ruler’s last comrade hurled the enchanted Excalibur into the cold ripples of the lake. A mysterious hand caught the steel. The mourning boat with the four queens slowly disappeared into the gray morning mist.

Canon Recipes and Peter Pan Syndrome

The collection’s literary criticism section opens with a confession of an incurable mental illness — an escape from bourgeois comfort to the saving land of Peter Pan’s eternal childhood. Childhood rebellion determined the writer’s fate. The genre’s origins lie in the American penny magazines of the early twentieth century, where Windsor McCay drew sleepy Nemo and Robert E. Howard churned out the bloody adventures of the muscular Cimmerian Conan. The real explosion occurred in 1965. The pocket-sized edition of the Ring trilogy transformed university professor John Tolkien into an idol for rebellious youth, who scrawled slogans calling for Gandalf to run for President of the United States on the walls.

The market was quickly flooded with artisans. Piers Anthony’s multi-volume series turned into endless commercial pulp with scantily clad women on Boris Vallejo’s covers. Ursula Le Guin broke the mold. In "The Tombs of Atuan," the great mage Ged loses his supposed omnipotence in the midst of a dark labyrinth, finding salvation through the hand of the priestess Tenar.

Aspiring authors are offered a caustic guide. They apply a rough ink stain to a blank sheet of paper, invent rivers that flow strictly from the mountains to the sea, and scatter valleys with ominous names like Typhoid Gorge across the map to attract naive buyers. The title is pulled out of a hat. It’s enough to randomly combine the words "sword," "sorcerer," or "dragon" with the elements.

The most venomous sarcasm is unleashed on the zealots of ostentatious Slavic exoticism, who have replaced mythological depth with sour patriotism, wooden idols of Svarozhich, and the strained adventures of the invincible hero Varenik among oak groves. The attempt to conceal illiteracy has failed. The reader is presented with caftans made of catfish scales, loaded crossbows in packs, and physiological details of sexual acts with missing teeth. Pseudohistorical nonsense is disguised as postmodernism. Literary critics and graphomaniacs are prescribed vinegar enemas, based on a recipe from 1830 by the Prussian doctor Paulitsky.

Fantastic Beasts Registry

The final section of the book reproduces a medieval bestiary. The parodic overview opens with a pastiche of the fourth-century Alexandrian Physiologus, where the habits of animals were interpreted through theological allegories. Nature is full of bizarre monsters. On the Orcadian bernicle tree, instead of juicy apples, ripen mollusks, from whose opening shells live geese, ready for flight, tumble out into the salty waves. A poisonous asp escapes its charmer. Pressing one ear to the ground and plugging the other with the tip of its tail, the cunning reptile resembles a rich man deaf to the word of God.

The basilisk kills with a fleeting glance. A deadly crowned serpent is hatched by a marsh toad from the egg of a seven-year-old rooster under the rising constellation Sirius, and the only means of controlling the subterranean monster are a fearless caress, the ringing morning crowing of a rooster, and a polished mirror. The salamander extinguishes fire with its icy belly. The Indian bogun upas tree poisons the air with toxic fumes for six kilometers around, turning the flourishing countryside into a desert. The crocodile weeps over its prey. A unicorn is caught with a pure virgin, as the ferocious beast with a diamond carbuncle on its forehead submissively bows its head to the maiden’s hem.

The African catablepas drags its muzzle sadly through the dust. The enormous weight of its head prevents the monster from exterminating all living things around it with its deadly breath and murderous gaze.

The second dictionary describes the evil spirits of fantasy. The Breton anku, the herald of impending doom, rides on a creaking cart at dusk, carrying away the souls of the doomed on a skinny, overworked nag. An Irish banshee screams beneath the windows. A kelpie lurks in the rapids of Scotland, taking the form of a saddled black steed to treacherously drown the unwary rider. The miller’s kilmulis is mouthless. A misshapen dwarf stuffs grain directly into a monstrous nose the size of a smoked sausage, helping his master grind flour in exchange for a modest bowl of fresh stew.

Gremlins destroy complex machinery. Brought in by British pilots from factories in the 1940s, demons sabotage machine tools, cut fighter jet wiring, drop sandwiches buttered side down, and inhabit computer circuit boards. Drau hide in dungeons. Dark elves inherited the black skin and venomous malice of the Scandinavian Svartalfar, trading sunlight for eternal carnage in dank caves. The Prague Golem froze in the attic. A clay giant sculpted by Rabbi Loew crushed pogromists, rebelling against his creator after the first letter of the secret word on his forehead was erased.

Ghouls gnaw at the bones of cemeteries. True elves, tall and slender, live to be five hundred years old, divided into the Sili Circle, which favors mortals, and the merciless Ansili Circle. The mirror reflects even human incisors, without the slightest hint of predatory fangs. A shock of hair conceals their ears.